The wind turned cold on Thursday, and the weather tried to snow in the valley -- it was white above 1000 meters. I exchanged some fabulous emails with author Toni Bentley about her Ida Rubinstein presentation at Harvard University's 100 Year Celebration of Ballet Russes' debut in Paris. The High Patroness of Our Blog was the ONLY dancer who got her own slot in the seminar -- super-luminaries like Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova did not. Toni is always very fair to Ida's memory, but she writes as an ultra-disciplined former ballerina, which Rubinstein never was, and tells the truth. (Follow the links below)

Sitemeter Sez: Chandler, Arizona; Dayton, Ohio; Hainesport, New Jersey; Winter Park, Florida; Birmingham, Alabama; Summerville, South Carolina; Columbia Falls, Montana (Hi, Christy!); Mobile, Alabama; Copenhagen, Denmark; Mexico City, Mexico; Madrid, Spain; Eatontown, New Jersey; Bors, Sweden; Puteaux, Ile-de-France; Evansville, Indiana; Fort Worth, Texas; Oakland, California; Hiwassee, Virginia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Stockbridge, Georgia; Singapore City, Singapore, and Brooklyn, New York.

MUCH more history at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's FIRST illustrator of the 21st, for including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art, but we're moving everything down to the Hilton next Friday to sell it all, and putting up a portrait exhibit in its place, including Larry Johnson's photos of local characters.
Dan Fagre's show has come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

The college has had many special events since I got back from Seattle, including Chef's Table and Lunafest earlier tonight. I spent a lot of hours turning tapes into DVDs this morning too.

Media Watch: A video of Jai Ho, with references to the original Bollywood dance in Slumdog Millionaire, only performed by the Pussycat Dolls, with English lyrics. I hope they aren't over-reaching. I prefer them light and humorous -- am hoping that the recent tour with Lady GaGa maybe made 'em a little goofier.
Trash A Go Go is getting fun, now that we're mostly outta the schlub-zone. I generally liked the results show because it was loaded with entertainers, more than I can name. The less I see/hear the group Celtic Women, the better I feel, but even THEY didn't overstay their welcome. I enjoy seeing new professionals, but making a contest out of the selection process doesn't please me. I knew Lawrence Taylor would go next, simply because he was so unenthusiastic. The cowboy and country singer can't last, because of their inabilities. I'm still favoring Cheryl and Gilles. It was terrifying to read that an armed stalker, targeting teenaged contestant Shawn Johnson, was captured in the Dancing with the Stars building. The alternative would have been worse, of course, but no kid should have to worry about things like this just because they are successful at a young age.

A digitized sketch of beautiful and talented Nicole Scherzer, current lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls, modified to resemble images I saw in their Jai Ho video.

Real Spring weather for Earth Day 2009! We have a wind from the north, but it's warm for a change. The Ospreys (Fish Eagles) are settling into the Flathead Valley, and all over the Pacific Northwest.

Sitemeter Sez: Woking, UK; Lyon, France; Limerick, Ireland; Salem, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Hackensack, New Jersey; Denver, Colorado; Aurora, Oregon; Rockaway, New Jersey; Louth, Ireland; Rochester, New York, and Little Neck, New York.

MUCH more history at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's FIRST illustrator of the 21st, for including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art.
Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

The award-winning movie Fuel was shown to a couple of hundred people at the college for Earth Day. Public turnout was great. We had many events going on, and will have more running through Saturday.

Media Watch: I caught some of Wagner's opera Siegfried while navigating the freeways around Seattle last Saturday -- treachery upon treachery, and a singing dragon to boot! There was a duel between bass-baritones when Wotan and Albrecht argued just before Siegfried slew his monster. This scion of incest by two of Wotan's children then took the magic ring and conquered the fires surrounding Wotan's daughter, the Waulkurie Brunhilde. They made love as only tenors and sopranos can. (These squirmy fantasies say a lot about Wagner's social class and royal patrons.) Love Potion Number Nine will take Brunhilde's hero away next week, but she'll make everybody pay -- Gotterdamerung!

Fafnir the Dragon, from Fritz Lang's vision
of the Siegfried story circa 1924.

It has been a fun bomb-out drive to the West Coast, and I'm heading back to Montana in about an hour. I visited my friend, choreographer / dancer Katie Duck this weekend in Seattle -- the closest we've been in proximity for 30 years. I also shot video of stilt-walker / trick-roper Karen Quest, who was working the Puyallup Spring Fair. (pictures later)

Sitemeter Sez: Rochester, New York; Little Neck, New York; Toronto, Ontario; Frankfort, Indiana; Los Angeles, California; San Francisco, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; Glasgow, Scotland; Denver, Colorado; Lansing, Michigan; Pereira, Colombia; Portland, Oregon; Oakland, California; Madrid, Spain; Chicago, Illinois; Whitefish, Montana (was that YOU, Dunnigan?); Rock Hill, South Carolina; North Fort Myers, Florida; Orem, Utah (uh, oh -- I'm going to visit there this summer); Farsta, Sweden (Stockholm area); Long Beach, California.

MUCH more history at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's FIRST illustrator of the 21st, for including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art.
Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

Media Watch: A Seattle public-access channel showing dawg-assed dreadfuls in the late hours -- EXCELLENTly bad flicks like Mr. X; Gigantis the Fire Monster (sequel to Godzilla); and even Wild Women of Wongo, one of the worst of the worst -- from a sub-minor league that includes amateur filmmakers like Arch Hall Sr. and Cash Flagg. The hotel TV also showed Comic Book films like Spider Man II (pretty good), and Ultra Violet (almost good). Speaking of the latter movie, and model Milla Jovovich, I also saw pieces of Fifth Element, which made her an S-F movie star, as well as the stoopid Doom starring ex-wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson who is now a genre star too.

A digital sketch of model / musician / actress Milla Jovovich in the movie Ultra Violet. (Ultra-violent, get it?) Nude images of this beautiful, ambitious, artist and mother abound on the Internet, if ya' just hafta look. She's at her best doing high-fashion and cosmetics, but I'm glad she has the sense of humor it takes to slum around the S-F/Comic Book genre. Her music isn't bad at all, either.

Neighborhood Deer are still eating green in the twilight. There was a cold wind out of the North all week, but the grass is still growing fine.

Sitemeter Sez: Long Beach, California; Bellevue, Washington; Montreal, Quebec; Amarillo, Texas; Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin; Sana, Yemen; Paris, Ile-de-France; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Okinawa, Japan; Albany Creek, Australia; Saint Louis, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; Brighton, England (again) and Louth, Ireland.

MUCH more history at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's FIRST illustrator of the 21st, for including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Montana On The Move and New Artists have their joint reception tomorrow. The Auction of Miniatures is up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- get over there and bid!
Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

A Week of Mondays at the college in the wake of Spring Break. I edited that video advertising our Earth Day celebrations, though.

Media Watch: Trash A Go Go dropped the lousy dance-off idea again -- hopefully forever. Derek and Kim did the re-do. Cheryl and Gilles were still the best, although the ^%$#@! judges graded them down on a higher standard -- the latter couple were SUPERB again last Monday. I always speak well of Carmen Elektra -- she's funny, and entertaining, and choreographed a pleasant neo-burlesque number which outdid many a piece by more prestigious practitioners. Steve-O is gone, and Lawrence Taylor can't be far behind.

Theater X-Net has quite a lot of new material!

Another piece of artwork from Spring 1973 in my studio on 1st South, near the University of Utah. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was brand-new. I had David Bowie's Hunky Dory (Ch-Ch-Changes) on an 8 track tape in my Volkswagen. Model Mary (above) was in the Dance Department, and so was my friendly neighbor Lisa Katz. Soon, both me and my camera would be there too, pioneering portable video.
Speaking of Dance, I am going to visit my friend, choreographer / dancer Katie Duck this weekend in Seattle -- it's the closest we've been in proximity for almost 30 years. We first met while I was renting the 1st South Studio (above). I'll also spend time shooting video with stilt-walker/trick-roper Karen Quest, who is working the Puyallup Spring Fair.

The neighborhood Deer are still eating in the twilight. Spring finally showed her face around here, and we've had pleasant weather all week. Migrating birds are able to set down in the slough now that the ice is gone.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Singapore; Baltimore, Maryland; Winter Park, Florida; Newbury, West Berkshire; Sofia, Bulgaria; Batley, up in Yorkshire UK; Croydon, UK; Monroe, Michigan; New York City, New York; Albertson, New York; Billingham, a village near York, UK; Salt Lake City, Utah; Bellevue, Washington; Montreal, Quebec; Amarillo, Texas; Montreal, Quebec; Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin; Sana, Yemen; Paris, Ile-de-France; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Okinawa, Japan; Albany Creek, Australia; Saint Louis, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; Brighton, UK (return visitor), and Simi Valley, California. (Lotsa people looking at Lady GaGa's hilarious hair-bow.)

Some more history at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's FIRST illustrator of the 21st, for including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: The Auction of Miniatures is up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- get over there and bid! The school shows are still going up, and we'll have a public reception later this week. Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

We just had spring break at the college -- I hope that doesn't mean a week of Mondays coming when classes re-open. I have to edit a video advertising our Earth Day celebrations.

Media Watch: Trash A Go Go did their lousy dance-off idea again with their two worst couples, and a mediocre celeb left instead of the popular schlub. Cheryl and Gilles still have the inside track -- the latter was SUPERB last Monday, losing himself in their dance.

Wreak-ard Wagner's High Camp, uh, High Culture opera Die Walkurie is on the radio as I write -- Act One, featuring the incestuous lovers, is mostly a romantic duet. (I joke around, but I actually LOVE this music!) I'm running off to do some errands, but I'll be listening to Ride of the Valkyries when it comes on the air!

Web Preview
I'm devoting more time to my artistic biography, and working on the critical period when the SLC Mime Troupe were doing their first shows. Here's a drawing of mine from when I was 23 years old:

Like Wagner, I was guilty of kitschy imagery too, but with none of his gravitas. This group of figures was meant for publication in Promethean Enterprises magazine, but they went out of business before it was finished. Modern Dance was obviously inspiring me. It's no surprise that I was involved in the scene soon afterwards.

OK, the weather lightened up -- Palm Sunday looked and felt like it should. There have been neighborhood Deer eating in the twilight now that the snow has melted off their range. I spent yesterday morning helping my next-door neighbor at Greendale Court burn the weed stubble off the banks of Dry Bridge Slough below our houses.

Thanks again to everyone who came by for Ada Lovelace Day. The most fun thing was when one of my dedicatees read it, and wrote a comment. Scroll down three posts to read my essay.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Columbia Falls, Montana; Geneva, Ohio; The Dominican Republic; Oakland, California; Laval, Quebec; Middelburg, Holland; Worcester, UK; Lawrence, Massachusetts; Berlin, Connecticut; Slidell, Louisiana; East Greenwich, Rhode Island; Wyandanch, New York; Zagreb, Croatia; Somewhere in Morocco; East Berlin, Pennsylvania; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Toronto, Ontario; Greenwich, Connecticut; San Cristbal, Venezuela; Camden, South Carolina; San Francisco, California; Brooklyn, New York; Grand Blanc, Michigan; North Salt Lake, Utah; Brighton, UK (The famous seaside resort town); Hyde Park, New York; Norfolk, Virginia; Norwalk, California; Montreal, Quebec; Louth, Ireland; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Chicago, Illinois; Oradell, New Jersey; Beaconsfield, Quebec; Sainte-Thrse, Quebec; Grenoble, France; Hamburg, Germany; Kamas, Utah; Hartford, Connecticut; Montreal, Quebec; Neu Wulmstorf, Germany; Sacramento, California; Charleston, South Carolina, and Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Quebec.

Some more history at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's FIRST illustrator of the 21st, for including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades. The Auction of Miniatures is up NOW -- get over there and bid -- the school shows are going up this week.

The FVCC Honors Symposium featured China Today by Eric Pei, our Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence / Visiting Professor from Liaoning University, Shenyang, China. Eric's speech was based on aspects of living in China -- both before 1979, and after the rise of pragmatic Deng Xiaoping, where things improved significantly for the average citizen.

Media Watch: Trash A Go Go has gone back to the the lousy idea of dance-off between their two worst couples -- too bad. The music is quite good, and much more varied than in other seasons. Cheryl and Gilles still seem to have the inside track.

Sublime & Ridiculous

Hedwig and the Angry Inch again by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig), with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask. I've learned a little more about it since I first raved about the film on this blog a few years back -- it is still Rock and Roll at its most expressive, with heartbreaking humor and metaphorical truth echoing throughout the whole thing.

The Dark Knight (2008) written and directed by Christopher Nolan from the various interpretations of Batman over the last generation. Frank Miller's Dark Knight re-created that old superhero during the 80's, and many people were inspired by the metamorphosis. Three lines up from the bottom of the credits is a welcome acknowledgement of Jerry Robinson, who turned the amateur work of teenagers Bob Kane and Bill Finger into a professional production, and helped create a cultural icon.
The late Heath Ledger dominated the whole movie with his portrayal of The Joker as a demented super-sociopath, and deserved his postumous Academy Award. Unfortunately, there wasn't much in this movie for Ledger to dominate. Harvey (Two Face) Dent was woven in as a sub-plot. Nolan spent a lot of money on special effects and actors, but his dialog was outright awful most of the time and the plot was dull and interminable and unfocused and capricious and distracted and didn't make sense and had more holes than material and couldn't come to a point and lacked suspense and wasn't funny enough to punctuate the violence and cruelty and ran on like a poorly - constructed sentence, leaving the audience hanging in the air like Joker, or stranded on ferries in the East Gotham River. I'm afraid even a lowly comic book editor would have taken a razor knife to Nolan's writing, and maybe made a call to Frank Miller or even Jerry Robinson for help. I'll make a partial, but sincere, list of better comic book movies than this one: X-Men I, II, and III; Fantastic Four I and II; Iron Man; Spider Man I, II, and III; Superman Returns; Tank Girl; Daredevil; Tim Burton's Batman, and even Ang Lee's deeply-flawed Hulk.

Batman punches out The Joker in 1942 -- cover art by Fred Ray (layout) and Jerry Robinson. Image from http://www.comics.org